ETA Admits Tech Providers

An article this week in ISO&Agent identifies a shift in attitude from the traditional core of the merchant acquiring space toward the technology companies that acquirers historically viewed as industry interlopers.

The Electronic Transactions Association has elected to admit as members firms that do not fit the typical payments industry model, such as Google, Verizon, Panasonic, and Ericsson.

The article finds that ISOs and other merchant service providers seem more willing to embrace tech providers as potential business partners because they are more confident that their merchant relationships are safe from disintermediation. What’s more, the merchant relationships that ISOs have cultivated position them as attractive counterparties for firms seeking implementation of new payment technologies, such as mobile payments.

One sure sign of the transition is on display at the Electronic Transactions Association, a Washington-based trade group for ISOs, processors and acquirers.A successful push to persuade tech companies to join the association represents the biggest change the group’s new CEO, Jason Oxman, has seen in his brief tenure. In just three months with the organization, he has managed to help bring Google and other tech firms in as members.

“One of the things I’ve been focused on since my arrival is in implementing a strategy our board chairman Eddie Myers likes to call ‘expanding the tent,’ ” Oxman says.

Persuading tech companies to join the association could represent an early step in forming relationships between those companies and ISOs, he says.“When we bring technology companies into ETA and expand our activities around new payments infrastructure, we do so with the goal of creating new business opportunities and fostering business connections for our member companies,” says Oxman.